I so enjoyed this conversation yesterday with Robert Litman. We seem to have talked about almost everything, including birth, breath, Continuum, prenatal shadow, and more! It was both informative and personal. I hope you enjoy it too. I highly recommend Robert’s Substack. He has more of these fascinating conversations, as well as his own articles evolving from his years of exploration of breath, Buteyko, and Continuum.

Cherionna Menzam-Sills

Live with Robert Litman & Cherionna Menzam

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10 days ago · Cherionna Menzam-Sills and Robert Litman

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My dear late husband, Franklyn Sills, passed one year ago today. This poem reflects my feelings on this day.

Tending the tenderness
Filling my heart
Extending out 
Beyond its edges
Weeping into tissues
Meant perhaps for other things.

Tender remembering
My love
The one who passed
One year ago, today.

The love remains
My partner for life
No longer in life
Cannot continue 
Walking beside me.

I miss his hand in mine.
I miss his kind smile.
The twinkle in his eye
His unexpected humour
And the always expected stories,
Again.

I miss how we danced in the kitchen
I dance with him still
But it’s not quite the same.
I play his music
Chat with him about my day
He seems to listen
More silently 
Than in life.

Today
This anniversary day
I sit with him
In quietude
And tears.
Heart wrenched
Between worlds.

I reach to him
Feel him
Sense his light
Sense his ongoing work
In ways I hadn’t expected.

Grief mixed with gratitude
All he gave me
And so many others
Lapping up his knowledge
Brilliance freely offered
Curiosity combining fields
Where others had not imagined
What now was possible.

So many of us
Remember today
How this remarkable man
Changed our lives
For the better
In so many ways.

Tenderness being tended
By community.
I feel supported
Buoyed by love.

We need not fear the grief
It simply shows us
How deeply we love
How immensely we loved.

Tending the tenderness
It grows like a fine fire
Lighting my heart
As he lit my world.

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Walking up our usually peaceful High Street recently I passed a man exuding anger and impatience. Not too far past him was a woman struggling to get out of her mobility scooter. She seemed to be tangled with a dog lead behind her. No longer able to contain himself, the man stormed over to her, cursing loudly, calling her names one should never hear on the Hight Street, or anywhere else, for that matter.

I had passed her now and turned around to see what he was doing to her. I felt protective. Two women who had been walking in front of me also stopped to look. After a minute or so one said to the other, “I don’t think we should get involved,” and they continued up the street.

I agreed that it would not be wise to confront the man, which would no doubt lead to escalation and possibly physical violence. He was a big man, his entire structure demonstrating degrees of rage I would not want to get close to. I still felt protective.

I found myself sending metta, a Buddhist term often translated as loving-kindness.

I saw three or four men standing close to him and imagined they were also feeling protective. Then I realized they could not get by him, as he had angrily thrown his backpack into the path. He extended his swearing to them and kicked his pack out of their way.

I could see the woman was finding her way to standing with the support of her cane as the man roughly untangled the dog and its lead.

Last Year’s Metta

My thoughts moved to my dear late husband, Franklyn, who a year ago had been very ill in hospital. He probably knew he was dying although no one spoke of this. It was just weeks before he passed. He was in pain, and too weak to get out of bed. There was a man on the ward who was screaming much of the time. I heard his screams one day as I arrived to visit Franklyn. I was worried my husband would be upset. Instead, I found him smiling. “I’ve been sending him metta,” he revealed.

He was such a man. Even as he was in pain and dying, he was sending metta to someone he saw as even more misfortunate than he.

The memory on the High Street was that much more relevant because my back had gone into spasm a few days earlier and I was walking up the High Street slowly and gingerly, trying to reduce the pain. There was, however, no hesitation about sending metta to this disturbed couple.

After a few minutes, the man seemed to calm down. I felt my job was done. I continued up the High Street to negotiate my grocery shopping. The physical pain persisted but my heart felt peaceful and happy.

May We All Be Happy

The words accompanying metta practice are often along the lines of:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be free.

Franklyn used to say, “May we all know our inherent freedom and luminosity.”

I offer this prayer now to all of us, all inhabiting this suffering, changing planet, and all beings, those we know about and those we don’t.

I strongly feel that, if we could all enable ourselves to settle into presence enough to offer mettawhere it is needed, which often starts with ourselves, our inherent health and original potential would be revealed. Imagine, for example, if every newborn baby was welcomed by a team of kind people exuding loving-kindness, instead of anxiously analyzing, poking, measuring, pulling, twisting, etc. We might create a different, happier world just by properly welcoming those arriving in our world! We could also offer metta to politicians, criminals, AI (?), and other challenging entities in our lives.

Will you join me in intending metta?

I include you in my metta prayer. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you know your inherent freedom and luminosity.

I invite you in joining me in being curious about how these words and this intention lands in you. Does anything change in your sense of yourself? Your body? Your breath? Your relationship with Mama Earth? What changes? What does metta mean to you?

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This poem emerged as I was preparing to teach a class the other day where we were somatically exploring the contrasting qualities of egg and sperm. This was part of my 6-week course on Exploring Your Prenatal Shadow.

What are we all rushing for?
Where do we intend to get to?
What do we hope to reach?

Our egg isn’t going anywhere.
She floats majestically
Waiting
As patiently as possible
Moved only by the currents
In her sphere.

We have already been conceived
We have already made it
And we survived
That precarious encounter
Guided by supreme bio-intelligence
That knew its timing
Better than we do.

We have forgotten
Our survival
Already happened
Continuing to swim upstream
Against time
Against all hope
Risking exhaustion

But what if we stopped
Paused for a rest
Recovered our wisdom
Retrieved our knowing
Received the pulsing
Of this one special life?

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with thanks to Muriel Soriano for the video.

Have you ever visited
The fountain of poetry?
Toss in a penny
And a poem pops out.

If only it were so simple.

I chase these poems
As they play hide and seek
Or sometimes tag

They can be shy
Sliding behind shady trees
Slithering between rocks
Avoiding light on a sunny day
Delivering it at night.

Is that the moon shining
Or my latest poem
Emerging from the lake
Like the mermaid seldom seen?

Words play in the shadows
Romp across the fields
Of my sleepy mind.

The most potent of poems
Write themselves
At 3 a.m.
When I would rather be sleeping.

And when morning dawns
Poems go back to sleep.

The muse amuses herself
With my frustration
Toying with me
Like a cat with a mouse

And yet
I am enamoured
I call upon her every day
And when I am lucky
She comes out to play.

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This month of July is significant for me in special ways. Sixteen years ago, in 2010, I left my life in North America and moved across the pond to live with my soul mate in the UK. We married soon after I arrived and our relationship continued to deepen and, in many ways, delight, until he sadly passed away last summer.

As we enter July this year, I am aware of how profoundly my life changed when I moved here, but also the deep healing in the years preceding the move that I see as having enabled me to enter this relationship and this new life.

I have never lived anywhere this long before! I have been living in the same house for sixteen years! I was in the same relationship for all these years. (I consider myself to still be in relationship with Franklyn even though he is no longer in the physical body I was familiar with.) This length of time to live in one place or to have a relationship was unheard of prior to the profound healing I experienced through exploring my prenatal history.

Our First Home

One of the most important and challenging milestones of our prenatal journey occurs 5 – 7 days after conception. At this point, we need to implant or “nest” into the wall of the mother’s womb. If we don’t, we starve to death. Yes, it is that stark. Like most prenatal developmental milestones, it is a matter of survival that we succeed.

For many of us, implantation can be extremely challenging. Our success is dependent on many factors such as the health of the mother’s womb, which may be affected by her attitude toward pregnancy, becoming a mother, being female, or even the shape of her female body. There may also be more obvious factors like pollution, stress, and previous sexual or birth trauma.

My mother hated her body. She had dieted so extremely at age eighteen that her menstrual cycle had stopped. She abhorred gaining weight. Guess what happens in pregnancy?! Please understand that, on the surface, consciously, my mother was outspoken about wanting as many children as possible. Her dreams, however, were countered by the conditions of her life. She already had my brother, who was a rambunctious toddler. Her husband, my father, was mentally ill, which was becoming increasingly obvious. His out-of-control behavior and treatment of her left her feeling unsafe and unsure. This was not a welcoming environment for a child to enter.

That child was me. Through my prenatal therapy, I realized that, not only did I face, and survive, enormous challenges before birth, but I also survived them. When learning about such early experiences, which may include traumas, we often forget that we have already made it! We tend to slip back into the emotional, physiological state of the little one that we were. Since the challenge back then was a life-or-death matter, we may feel overwhelmed by the urgency we faced back then.

Echoes of a Prenatal Past

How is this relevant to July and having lived in one place for sixteen years? Implantation is about finding and settling into a home. My mother’s womb did not offer the plush uterine wall I needed to gently burrow into. Instead, I struggled to make my nest in what felt like a concrete wall. This was a clear sense in my body when I re-visited this time through therapy.

Until I came to understand this primal experience, I was acting out my history by never fully settling into a home or a relationship. Back in the days before digital everything, my friends used to complain that I filled up their entire address book by moving so often! I seldom lasted more than a year or so at one address. My relationships were also short-lived.

As my healing proceeded, I began to settle a bit more. I lived somewhere for three years. My last home before moving to the UK was for four years. I had never even lived in one town for as long as I have lived in the UK. I lived in Toronto for fifteen years but had almost as many addresses during that time.

Before beginning my relationship with Franklyn, I engaged in years of intensive study and therapy, focused on embodiment and prenatal and birth experience. I am so grateful for having been guided into this field. My life is so much easier and more fulfilling. Since doing this work for myself, my deepest impulse has been to facilitate the journey for others.

Shining Light on the Prenatal Shadow

I have learned that a helpful starting point is to increase our awareness of how our early history may be expressing itself in our lives now, including our behaviors, relationships, addictions, and more. I consider this early material to generally be held unconsciously as what Carl Jung called “shadow.” This term refers to aspects of ourselves that we have learned are unacceptable and tend to be forgotten to our conscious minds. Our prenatal experiences are rarely spoken of or reflected to us as we are learning to speak, and our conscious mind is developing. Lacking words, these implicit memories are held in our bodies, our tissues, our nervous system, our beliefs, and our behavioral tendencies. Shining the light of awareness is a first important step in integrating these memories, liberating us from their sticky hold.

If you are curious about how your own prenatal experience may be affecting you and your life, I invite you to read my recent book, The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced Before and at Birth, and to join my upcoming online course, Exploring Your Prenatal Shadow. The course begins July 16^th and is intended to guide you gently through experiential explorations to shine light on the prenatal shadow.

I’m curious. What does July hold for you?

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Since September, I have been committed to writing a poem each day. It was meant to be a 100-day writing challenge and is now nearing 300. I feel it is time to start sharing more of them here. I can’t say that each one is a masterpiece, but I like some more than others and offer them to you. I’d love your feedback. This one might make most sense if you live in the UK, or near the sea, but I’m sure you might resonate wherever you are. As you might guess, it was written around the time of the Solstice.

Solstice Seagulls

Seagulls screaming
Celebrate as the Solstice sun arises
I do not celebrate with them
Although I appreciate the Solstice
At 3:45 a.m.
I was hoping to continue my dreams…

Then I wonder
Are they celebrating?
Or debating?
Their screams remind me
Of our politicians.

What do they dispute so early
In the morning?
Do they set quotas
As the day begins
How many children’s ice cream cones
To steal?
Or do they determine in advance
Who will be the thief today?
Do they establish rules
For which side of the head 
To swipe the child’s food from
Or perhaps
Again
Like our politicians
They squabble over fishing rights?

I’m sure to seagulls
Their conference is important.
I just need to understand
Why it must disturb my sleep!

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When every ounce of energy
Seems to have drained
From spaces of the body
Something else
Must emerge.

Like a cactus
Blooming in the desert
With the smallest rain.
The body wants its fluids…

Water the cells!
Feed the tissues!
Awaken the neurons
Antennae to the stars!

Creativity begins to surge
Generating energy
That had been forgotten.
Yes, 
Life is possible!

How do you feel when you read this? Do you know this state of exhaustion? In those moments, do you experience the return to creativity and life? I hope this poem can serve as a reminder!

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Have you ever had the experience of an intense emotion, like anger, fear, or even what feels like love, arising suddenly, as if out of nowhere? This surprising, sometimes shocking presentation of emotion is common when prenatal trauma is being triggered in the present.

Here I am referring to prenatal trauma that any of us may have encountered when we were in the womb. You might also witness such sudden emotional explosions in your children, if you are a parent. The clue is that they seem to come out of nowhere. They either don’t clearly relate to current circumstances or are out of proportion to what is actually happening.

Unfortunately, babies in the womb often have this kind of experience. Little ones cannot differentiate between what is theirs and what belongs to someone else, usually their mother. If their mother is sad, the baby feels the sadness. Babies don’t create separate categories for mother’s sadness and my sadness. They take in their world directly, feeling it in their body. They need someone, usually again the mother, to differentiate for them. It can be incredibly helpful for little ones for someone to talk to them, explaining, for example, “Mommy is upset just now but it’s not about you. You don’t have to worry about it. I’m being taken care of (or I’m taking care of it).”

Most parents, and most of us who are around parents, have not learned to do this. Or the mother or others may be so overwhelmed by their situation that it doesn’t occur to them to reassure the unborn baby.

Prenatal Shadow

Unfortunately, even in the 21^st century when there are increasing numbers of studies available demonstrating prenatal awareness, intelligence, learning, and memory, there is remarkably little acknowledgment in everyday life of these people in the womb as being present in whatever the situation is. As I have emphasized in my recent book, The Prenatal Shadow, the sentience of little ones before and around the time of birth is essentially held as unconscious shadow material. The term shadow was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung. It refers to aspects of ourselves that have been pushed back into the unconscious because they are perceived as unacceptable. Surely, you might object, no one objects to babies in the womb!

Discovery: Welcome and Rejection

Some babies are objected to, rejected, given away through adoption, or even disposed of through abortion or abandonment. Babies whose parents do not celebrate and welcome their discovery often feel rejected, unworthy, unsafe, and unwanted. They may spend their entire life staying small to avoid the pain of being discovered. This is an echo from the prenatal development phase termed by pre- and perinatal therapy pioneer William Emerson as “Discovery.” It is defined as the time when the pregnancy is confirmed by a test. Although these days this can happen much earlier, it often happens around the time the heart starts beating, early in the fourth week after conception.

Memories of the pain of this dangerous rejection tend to be held in the area that was developing at the time – the heart and chest. People who felt rejected at this time often hold themselves hunched over their chest, as if protecting their sensitive heart. I have been struck by how this is the same posture common in shame. A child who feels unwanted is likely to develop the belief that something is wrong with them. Why else would they not be welcomed? This is a definition of shame. It is an identification with wrongness, or badness. Some rejected people compensate for their sense of vulnerability by puffing out their chest in a proud, defiant stance.

Staying Small to Stay Safe

I have supervised so many new practitioners who have trouble putting themselves out. They know they need to create a website, or an Instagram, etc. but they just can’t bring themselves to do it. They might even know how to do it. When we work with this, we often come to their experience of Discovery. It may have been that their parents were too young, too early in their relationship, or it was a one-night stand, or the mother was already overwhelmed with caring for young children, or she was otherwise over-stressed and under-supported. The baby accurately did not feel welcomed.

It is intelligent for a baby in the womb to be terrified by rejection. I remember William Emerson frequently declaring that anything other than celebration is shocking for the prenate. This is because the baby in the womb is completely dependent on the mother for food, protection, and survival. Love supports survival. We also know that it facilitates thriving, not just surviving. Rejection is dangerous. It is appropriate to hide, to avoid being a nuisance in case what is too horrifying to imagine happens.

Differentiation

So many of us have survived a challenging time of Discovery, or other prenatal hurdles, even if they weren’t as extreme as what I’ve described. It can be helpful when reading this and looking at this time of life to remember that we have already survived. Babies in the womb don’t know what the outcome will be.

Little ones cannot differentiate between past and present. Memories of our time in the womb are not conscious, verbal memories like when we recall what we ate for breakfast this morning. That doesn’t mean that we don’t remember. Prenatal, and preverbal, memory is a different kind of memory. It is implicit, rather than explicit. It is stored in the body, emotions, behaviors, beliefs, and relational tendencies.

Unlike explicit memory, which can be verbally described, consciously recalled, and placed in temporal context, implicit memory feels like it is happening now. When an event in everyday life triggers an implicit memory, it feels real. The fear of that time in the womb arises without explanation. It is just there. Again, it can be helpful to have an adult self, or a therapist, or parent, differentiate for this little one part. For example, “Yes, it was like that back then. Now, you are here. What is your current age now, today? What tells you that you are safe here and now? Can you feel me here with you?” (It is also important to differentiate for babies remembering and re-living a traumatic experience. This might be with simpler language. For example, “Yes, it was scary back then.” It is usually resourcing for babies to help them orient to their mother, here and now, who hopefully represents safety for them.)

Umbilical Affect

Prenatal memories may also seem to come out of nowhere because little ones often experience maternal emotions this way. We call this “umbilical affect” in prenatal and birth psychology. This refers to maternal affect (a term used in psychology to refer to emotions) transmitted to the prenate via the umbilical cord. The baby is awash in the physiological expressions of the mother’s emotions. Since babies don’t differentiate between what is theirs and what is mother’s, they simply experience the emotion directly, in the body, as if it was theirs. It seems to come out of nowhere. It just arrives.

Awareness for Healing

Unlike babies in the womb, we as adults are not helpless when emotions, or various forms of implicit memories arise. The more aware we are of prenatal experience, the more readily we can recognize what is happening and facilitate differentiation. We can orient to present time, the support and resources we have in our lives now, and re-connect with what I call our “original embryological potential,” which may have been occluded by our trauma.

If you are intrigued by these concepts, want to learn more for yourself, your children, and/or your clients, I offer both books and courses that can support you. My next online course is called Exploring Your Prenatal Shadow starting July 16^th. The classes will be recorded for those who are unable to join live at the time we meet, or would like to review the class afterwards.

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Yesterday I came home from the dentist and cried. I cried to you because you weren’t there to cry to. When you were alive, I would have cried. You would have listened, maybe offered me a hug, understood the frustration. Seven cavities! I’m not someone who has ever had much in the way of cavities! This is too much change. First, you. Then all the other things! I’m not ready for my body to decay like this!

Grief is like being on a mountain path. I wrote a poem about it yesterday.

Descending Grief
The descent seemed so rapid
As I misplaced my foot
A stone slipping under it
And down I went
Skidding on my bottom.
When at last the fall was paused
I slowly found my way to standing
Where I could see the path
A sharp climb behind me
A steady drop in front.
Tired, I continued down.

When I visited the Grand Canyon
There was snow on the rim when we began
By the time we were halfway down,
We had shed our coats and were hot in shorts.
This journey was a bit like that.
Like descending into the fires of Hell.

Grief gnawing at my knees
Making them wobbly.
Tears staining my cheeks.
Eyes too tired to stay open 
Yet so much to see.
Visions of the past
Infiltrate the present.
Where I lived in the future for so long
Before he passed.
And now
I was there
Mostly looking back.

And as I said
The path behind me
Was a sharp incline.
I had slid down
But the climb back up
Was hard work.
I had to take a deep breath
And just begin.
I couldn’t stay down there 
In the fires of Hell
Forever.

I am doing my best to climb back out. And then… and then, the dentist makes this announcement! Seven cavities! Unheard of!

My foot tries to lose its grip again. I slide back down a little. You aren’t here to cry to. But you are here in my heart.

I can brush my teeth, as I do. I can return to the dentist to visit her drill. I can breathe a bit deeper when I remember. I’m proud to have done that as she scraped and picked yesterday.

Still, the path is slippery. The rocks are loose. I am not yet guaranteed to arrive back at the top.

Another potential presents itself to me. There are roots in the earth for my feet to meet. The path goes up as well as down. Above me, Cosmos holds me well, inviting my breath to broaden and stretch into the biosphere. Even beyond.

There is always hope available when we look. Let me look. Let me remember. Perhaps, and I hope this is true, perhaps, this will be a time that grows me in a new direction. It’s not just about becoming an older woman with more dental decay. At least I still have my teeth! It’s not just about teeth! It’s not just about you being gone. Loss is alive in my soul but so is hope.

Something wants to happen here. Something is striving to sprout, to poke its head out of the earth, that very earth I have been slipping on. Something is ready to be born.

Let me open my arms, open my heart, to receive this birth, as all birth is intended to be met. Let me welcome the unknown knocking on my door. Let me meet this seedling with delight, with grace, with the water it needs. I can re-ignite the fluids within me, and so, I hope, the fires of life.

Will you join me? Breathe as you are able. We can appreciate the breath. Give thanks as you are able. We can be grateful for the chance to meet our challenges. Allow the micro-movements of every new seed, every new birth, to arise and shine within the embrace of our hearts.

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If yesterday can be today
Why can’t tomorrow be yesterday?
And what is today?
And especially
What is tomorrow?
Don’t we all live in that question?
What happens next?
Where will I be?
Who will I be?
What will I be
When I grow up?
It starts early
And ends late
This quest
To know
To live
In the future
To be
Where we are not
What if?
I like to ask that question…
What if
It was just now?

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Mother,
The word familiar to all of us
Held in various frames
Often depending
On early experience.

Did we feel welcomed
Securely held
Protected
Loved
Warmed and fed
By maternal presence?

Or did we long for something
Something we knew
Was missing
Deep in our cells
We knew
But may not have been able
To name.
We might then
Have grown in blame
Instead of resting in love.

But that was not our mothers’ fault.
She also knew
Deep in her cells
What was needed
What nature called upon her for.
But
Without having received, herself,
That nurturing
Support
(Layers of support)
She may not have found her way
To be
What she knew.

No one is to blame
But we might be empowered
By our knowing.
Deep in our cells
We know what is needed.

Support the mothers!
Nourish the knowing!
Listen sincerely!
Learn from the body
As it speaks its wisdom.

Let us begin now
To listen where we have ignored
Denied
Or overthrown.
Let us begin now
To live more wisely
Welcoming the mothers
Welcoming new life
With gentleness
With heartfulness
With receptivity
We can receive
As all mothers know 
Deep in their cells.

I offer this poem on the North American Mothers’ Day, when people may have varying feelings about their mother, or their role as mother, arising. It is a day to celebrate and appreciate mothers and mothering, but some people have difficulty doing that. As one who practices shining light on what is in shadow, I want to acknowledge the feelings that may not be spoken, but are felt and expressed within the body.

How do you feel reading this?

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You can learn more about how our earliest experiences, even before birth, can become unconscious shadow haunting our lives, in our beliefs, relationships, and even parenting style in my book The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced Before and at Birth.

What if I didn’t fill that void?
What if I just took time
Outside of time
Time to be
Time out?

What if I just sat
Or quietly walked
Or even danced
With the nothingness
That is everything?

Embracing the void
Savouring the empty
Allowing myself
To be filled
With space?

What if?
Do I need to complete 
That sentence?

Do I need to answer
Or respond?

Do I need to return
To how I was
Before?

Or is it possible
To just be
With 
What if?

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It was a cold day
A bit like today
Canadian wind, snow, and ice
Chilling the bone in January
Warm inside
But it was time
Time to go to the hospital.

My father was disturbed
His favorite program on TV
Had just begun
He had begged her
Just don’t ask to go
During Dragnet!
But that was it.
It was time.

He didn’t like my timing
I didn’t like the trip
Why are we going away
Into the cold car
Into the cold building
Surrounded by cold people
Too active
Too pushy
Too insistent
On doing something
To get me out?

I didn’t need their help.
My mother didn’t want the drugs
She liked that the pains were telling her
The baby was on her way.
The doctor 
Less friendly with the pains
Announced she would just have a little whiff
Of something.
And that was it.

A black cloud descended
We were gone.
No pain
And of course, no gain.
The metal came out
Pull this baby out!
Turn the head that way!
More force!
Time is of the essence!
It is time!

I had all the time in the world
I didn’t need his forceps.
Cold and hard
Denting my delicate head
Torquing my soft neck
Never to be soft again.

Can I forgive?
Yes.
It has taken years
It has taken effort
It has taken the gentle support
Of those who understand
What birth really needs.
I can forgive
Understanding the unfortunate ignorance
Of the doctor
And his culture.

I came to respect my mother’s feelings
She had wanted to be with the pains
She had wanted to be with me.
I didn’t know that.

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A loved one dies, even though expected, and a world dissolves.

I have been in that well of grief. I have fallen deep into the darkest of waters, managing to keep my head afloat, but heart swamped.

I visit that well now, even though some time has passed. I am more able now to meet my life in other aspects. Yet the well travels with me.

So many carry terror of that well. They will do anything, it seems, to avoid it. I am accustomed to practicing being present with whatever my experience. Grief is no different. But the intensity of losing the person dearest to me in my entire life, mate of my soul…this knocks me over the edge. I lose my footing for a while but am grateful to know how to swim.

Climbing out of the well takes more effort. The walls are hard and uninviting. They are slippery with black slime, overgrown through the years. Caring for him took most of my energy and so much time. I became behind in self-care. He died when I was on the verge of burnout.

Transition

His last words: “I can’t take any more.” I thought at the time he was referring to the protein drink he had taken two sips of. Later I thought about how one’s final words can be more meaningful than referring to food. He was ready. I was grateful he could let go before the suffering for him and for me was extended further. We were both tired. We had had enough. When you love someone that deeply, you don’t want them to have to suffer more than necessary.

I had given him permission, several times. I knew he needed to go. I always prefaced the permission by acknowledging, “I would miss you terribly, but…I give you permission.” I’m not sure I knew how true that would be.

I miss him terribly. I am grateful for the love we shared. Even in his final days, we were declaring how we were still in love with each other. He announced it to the doctor who sent him to the hospital.

It was true. In those last few years, when the dementia had been relatively tamed and we could again enjoy each other’s company, we danced together in the kitchen to his favorite tunes. We held hands. We kissed. We cuddled. I miss those things the most.

The night he died, I asked to keep the body until the next day. It was important to me to be with him. I climbed onto the noisy hospital bed that he had lived in for the week since his discharge from the hospital. It was possible to cuddle but sleep evaded me. His special air mattress to prevent pressure sores filled up every few minutes. It was set for his weight but my additional weight on the bed apparently caused it to groan loudly with each cycle. I finally had to go to my bed.

I didn’t sleep much, despite the late hour and my deep exhaustion. In the morning, I returned to cuddle with him. I don’t think he minded my tears. He never did.

The hardest part was when they took his body away. I hadn’t realized how attached I was to the body. I was grateful to be able to visit it several times before the funeral.

Something in me broke when he died. His body wrenched away from mine. His soul house no longer beside me. My own soul broke. Heartbroken. We never hear the term, “soulbroken.” I think it should be used more.

Learning

There is teaching and learning available in every experience, even at the bottom of the well. I strive to be compassionate, with all beings, including myself. I am so intensely fatigued, needing so much sleep. I cannot force myself to return to my usual workaholic state. I must slow down.

Ironically, my work is all about slowing down, listening deeply, meeting what presents with compassion. I needed to learn more about this for myself. I suspect the well of grief, whatever it may be about, has much to offer all of us.

Fortunately, the soul, like the physical body, has resilience. It probably has more. Soul seems to last longer, spanning lifetimes. I feel the healing as my soul mends. There is a scar where once there was response to my love. It teaches me. I understand even more profoundly the human need for welcome, from the very first moment. If we don’t experience that as we are coming into life, it can take some work to find it later. I have worked many years at that. My dear one who is now gone met me there. We welcomed each other in the fullest way possible. It was a reward for years of healing. Now, there is the possibility of taking that healing further than I had imagined. I am curious.

Plans

I have intended since setting up this Substack to offer my writings more regularly. Instead, I have fallen into the well of grief. As I re-emerge, I feel again the urge to share what I write.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I don’t know how I would have found my way out of the depths of the well without writing. Shortly after he died, I was invited to join a 100-day writing challenge. I chose to write a poem a day. I am still at it, probably about 200 days later. I have thoughts about compiling an anthology, to offer to my Substack followers as a gift for those with paid subscriptions. I’m not sure yet when it will be ready. I have learned to not push myself to meet the needs and expectations of everyone else. I can say that I feel it coming. As I return to the surface, my intention also rises. There is more energy available to bring it to fruition. The grief is no longer always center stage. It makes room for joy and the spark of life to shine again.

I perceive this new article as evidence that more is coming. I hope you will be here to read what I share and that you and all beings may benefit from these writings.

Please share in the comments what is touched in you reading this article.

Thank you for being here

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Voice whispers in the morning
“Remember
Remember 
Remember the love
I am your soulmate
I will love you forever.”

Whispers in the afternoon
“He is gone
That love but a memory.”
I can only respond
With my objection.
“This love is forever.”

Whispering in the night
“Wander the world
And worlds beyond!
Attend the needy!
Learn from the wise!
Share the love
This love forever.”

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Photo by Cherionna Menzam-Sills on yet another rainy day in Devon

A day of rain and rainbows
Sunshine in between.
Isn’t life like that?

When the rain comes
We forget that rainbows are possible.
Only when the sun begins to shine
Peeking out from behind dark clouds
Do we begin to imagine,
Just imagine,
Something like a rainbow might occur.

Why not live in that imagining?
Anything is possible.
Life is potential.

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Sometimes a soul strolls by
Or seems to sprint.
You sense a shadow
Out the corner of your eye,
Not a dark shadow,
A shadow so bright
You expect a clap of thunder next.

You exclaim in wonder
“Is that you?
Are you my beloved?”
Or then
You wonder
Is that me?
The me I have forgotten
The me I have been missing
As I forage my way through life?

Between the trees
Like between the thoughts
You think you’ve seen it.
You may not be sure
But it sees you.

And then the thunder comes
Aha!
Such a loud burst of insight:
It has been me all along.
I just wasn’t ready.
Welcome!

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